


This Is Halloween!

by dragonofdispair



Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [81]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Autobot Jazz Week, Autobot Jazz Week 2020, Drabble Collection, Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27201313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Jazz week 2020 + Halloween prompts! What could go wrong? XD
Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [81]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/239915
Comments: 67
Kudos: 41





	1. Pop Music (+ Walking alone in a graveyard)

**Author's Note:**

> Jazz week prompts:
> 
> 1 - Pop Music  
> 2 - Martial Arts  
> 3 - Dreaming  
> 4 - Assassin  
> 5 - Sunshine  
> 6 - Black Ops  
> 7 - Creator's choice
> 
> Halloween prompts: TBA, but since Jazz week ends on Halloween I couldn't resist doing something holiday themed. :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure "Spooky Scary Skeletons" counts as "pop music" but Peter Hollens' cover of the song crossed into my Youtube feed just in time to inspire this...

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 _"Spooky scary_ _skeletons..."_ Jazz hummed the song to himself quietly, careful not to disturb even the dust with the sound. It was a fairly simple song, but it really stuck into one's processor. 

It was strange how acclimating to another planet could change a mech. He’d walked through the piles of dead that littered Cybertron’s battlefields before and the only fear he’d felt was the fear of unexploded ordnance. Of discovery. The fears cultivated by war. 

Now he stepped lightly, touching the corpses as little as possible. He was afraid of disturbing them. Empties and sparkeaters and the other terrors of Cybertronian myth were sometimes dead, but other times not, and either way were not associated with places of the dead. They stalked the edges of the living places. Cybertronians didn’t fear dead bodies. They were just materials to be recycled. 

Human bodies decayed. 

There were all sorts and myths and legends and stories revolving around decay. Monsters that had been once-living, and now stalked the night still rotting away. Creatures that had to return to their graves. Ghosts and spirits still bound to their bones. And graveyards were nexuses of these stories. The places the dead rotted were places of deep seated fear and respect. 

There were no graveyards on Cybertron. No mausoleums. Sometimes there were monuments, but the smelters left nothing of the actual dead behind. 

Even these battlefields did not rot as he’d come to understand decay on Earth. Millions of years since these mechs had fallen and been left behind. Too many dead to collect. Too many dead to melt. And even after millions of years had passed, and they were pristine grey, only covered in a thick layer of dust. 

It was eerie. It was creepy. 

Unnatural. 

And though he knew that there was no rot, no decay, no _stories of monsters_ here… Jazz was afraid to disturb the dead. 

_“Spooky scary skeletons…”_

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	2. Martial Arts (+ Lost in the Woods with Something Following You)

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Something weird was going on. 

If he could have, Jazz would have tapped the screen of his GPS to see if that would get it to work. Unfortunately it was internal, and he’d already tried some percussive maintenance on his visor’s HUD to no effect. It just blinked at him, as if the innocent act would disguise the fact that his coordinates hadn’t changed so much as an inch in the last three miles. He would have scoffed at the unreliability of human satellites if it weren’t for the fact that he’d stopped getting updates from the  _ Ark’s _ skyspy as well.

Even that shouldn’t have mattered. Jazz knew the way from the  _ Ark _ to the  _ Nemesis _ like the back of his hand… 

These woods weren’t anywhere on his map, and he wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here. He’d followed the road! He should be at the beach!

The road, which had been a wide highway that promised he’d come across a gas station at some point, was now little more than a thin, dirt track. Of course he’d  _ tried _ just turning around and heading back the way he came, but the road continued to disappear into nothingness, until Jazz had been forced to walk because of the lack of space between the redwoods to drive in.

_ Grrrrrr… _

Jazz looked behind him. Something rustled in the underbrush. Targeting tracked it, but he saw nothing.  _ Wolf _ he guessed. Did this area have wolves? He actually wasn’t sure. There had once been wolves all over North America, but that didn’t mean there were any  _ now. _ Maybe it was a bear. It was maybe big enough for a bear. 

It rustled again.

Definitely not big enough to be a Decepticon, unless it was Ravage. But Ravage wouldn’t have given himself away by growling. 

It moved and growled again, and Jazz tracked it. 

It circled. 

“Look,” he said after a while, though he wasn’t sure a wolf or maybe-bear could understand. Humans understood languages, why not other organics? “Maybe you’re plenty scary to a human, but…”  _ you’re tiny, _ but some critters got offended at being called tiny even if it was true. “I know kung fu,” he finished with a bit of a laugh.  _ Kung fu _ was only an approximate translation but it worked well enough. 

The thing rustled again, then went still and didn’t return.

Well, as much as he’d wished the critter had come out to say hi, that was one problem down. Now to find his way out of these woods… 

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	3. Dreaming (+ Garden Decorations Come Alive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember _The World of David the Gnome_ … its run on TV was about the same time as G1, so is a cartoon they could be watching in the 1980s. I have fond memories. Here’s a youtube video of the theme song: https://youtu.be/bsdZQub7QVE

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The little decoration caught his optic while on patrol. It looked just like David the Gnome from that cartoon series Hound and Bluestreak liked. It was kind of adorable. Of course it scanned as simple concrete, just a decoration, but Jazz could understand why someone would want their house surrounded by such helpful critters. 

Oh, hey! Maybe he should knock and see if those inside had ever seen a real one? The <i>Ark’s</i> dedicated gnome-finders association would appreciate any info he could bring back. 

Humming to himself, Jazz transformed and tried to figure out how he was going to get to the door without disturbing the garden. It was a nice garden and he didn’t want to mess it up. 

He stepped over the fence and the little concrete display of gnome and duck with duck-sparklings and carefully tested his weight on the path. He winced when the flagstone sank a little bit into the packed earth, but it didn’t break so that was a win, right?

Inside the garden there were more of those concrete forest-creature displays. Jazz especially liked the deer. He didn’t often get to see ones that weren’t frozen in fear in the road or dead. These weren’t alive either, but they  _ looked _ alive!

Jazz also spotted a turtle and frog sitting with another gnome by a small water feature. Cute. Off to the side, there was a cluster of stone chickens carved like they were pecking at the ground while a dog sniffed nearby. There were rabbits -- Hound’s favorite -- under an azalea bush, being watched over by another charming little person in a pink cone hat. He saw an owl perched on a fencepost. And--

“Hey cool cats,” he greeted the stone kitties clustered around the porch. He held out his hand for them to mock-sniff. 

Smiling, he knocked on the cottage door, rapping lightly with his fingers and humming to his own rhythm. He hoped the owners were home. 

And hey! The door opened!

But no one came out. 

Weird…

“Hello?” Jazz leaned down, ducking under the overhung porch, to peek inside. The door, though open, still blocked his view into the house, so he gently pushed it open.

A human woman stood inside, dressed in draping robes and wearing a wig of snakes. She held out a bucket of halloween candy… and was completely made of concrete. 

“Frag!” Jazz drew back, startled and bumped his head on the porch. Then took another, alarmed step back when he saw movement around his feet. His targeting overlay came up, filtered out the glare from the sun and the interference from the plant life. The gnomes!

They swarmed out of the garden to scale his foot. He shook them off, alarmed but also uncertain what to do. Weren’t gnomes the good guys?

“Ouch!” One of them bit him!

Not cool. Not cool at all. Time to get the frag out of here. He stepped toward the fence…

Or tried to. His foot was stuck!

He yanked on it, trying to get it to respond, but it was heavy and immovable, adhered to the flagstone like the stone had been poured there. 

The gnomes swarmed up his stone foot and Jazz tried to brush them away. He felt bites in his knee, and in his fingers. He flung the offender off of him, and screeched in alarm as he watched his hand turn to colored concrete. 

Just like the rest of the decorations.

Panicked, he flung himself out of the garden, breaking himself into statuesque pieces--

And woke. 

His plating felt ice cold and he shivered. What the frag--?

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	4. Assassin (+ A Terrifying Dark Place)

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The door closed on its own, plunging the already gloomy space into full darkness.

Cursing that he hadn’t gotten a night vision HUD while he still could, Wreckage fumbled for the light switch. His fingers landed on it, and he heard the mechanisms click. No light. “What the frag?”

He tried opening the door, only to find himself locked in. “This isn’t funny Skywarp!”

The sound echoed around the storage room -- _sky-sky-sky--yy-arp-arp_ \-- but there was no answer. He hadn’t really expected there to be, but it had been worth a shot. Well frag. What was he going to do now?

He opened up his comsuite to get someone down here to open up the Primus-damned door!

Static.

Now alarm truly started to take hold. Jamming? That was a little far to go for a prank. 

Wreckage cautiously moved into the room. There should be some extra comm-units in here, ones that could either power through any localized jamming field or sidestep it by transmitting on different frequencies. 

His footsteps stirred up dust, and his vents coughed. A bump into a stack of supply crates nearly sent them tumbling onto him, and more dust flew into the air. Did anyone ever _clean_ back here?

Unable to see further than the shining of his own biolights, Wreckage relied on feel to find the crates he needed, touching the labels where they’d been etched with their contents. 

It was a slow way to search a room, even one much smaller than this storage area. 

Eventually, though, he found the proper crate. He followed the corner to the top and reached inside. And pulled out a handful of packing fluff. The comm-units were gone.

“Okay,” he announced to the empty gloom. “This isn't funny anymore.”

“Who’s laughing?” the gloom answered back. 

Wreckage screamed and whirled. His weapons ratcheted out of his body, arming with a thought. Too late.

The last thing he saw was a smirk, illuminated by a glowing blue optic band. 

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	5. Sunshine (+ A Doll or Stuffed Animal that is Alive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight crossover with a book I can’t remember the title of right now… :/

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Jazz was lounging, resting, when the critter poked him. Onlining, he was surprised by what he saw. Not because this planet didn’t have critters. The pre-landing scans had shown there was a vibrant ecosystem of mostly plants, and a smattering of Earth-based robots. This was obviously one of the latter, given how it was hauling its distinctly Earth-design weapon. 

The Autobots hadn’t exactly interfered when the newly united Earth had started sending out automated mining facilities that were programmed to defend themselves. It was a phase most species went through, and as long as they stuck to the list of uninhabited, and unclaimed planets the Galactic council had given them, there wasn’t a problem with it. And the arguments the human representatives had levied for making sure their automated mining facilities could make weapons and defend themselves had been fairly convincing. None of that meant Optimus agreed with it. 

This planet was not on the list the Galactic Council had given them, but it was uninhabited and unclaimed and Jazz actually liked these Earth-claimed mining colonies. They were generally good places to rest and recoup, because those facility AIs took the idea of an aggressive defense  _ seriously, _ and being swarmed by five or six hundred combat drones tended to ruin any pursuing Decepticon’s day.

So no, the little gun-toting drone’s presence wasn’t surprising to him. What  _ was _ surprising was that it was a teddy bear. Complete with faux fur covering. Like-- what?  _ Really? _

Okay, so he had alien teddy-bear war drones. This made total sense. 

A automated mining facility on a planet it shouldn’t have been on plus a war drone shaped like a plushie… actually, that  _ did _ kind of make sense. 

“Someone hacked your facility good,” Jazz mused, wiggling his wheels back and forth in a “stretch”. The aggressive little drone whirled on him, but Jazz wasn’t scared. He knew from experience that they weren’t -- shouldn’t be -- aggressive towards Autobots. 

Just in case, though, he scanned the area, just to make sure that there weren’t any more around. Nothing but plants. Looked like he had a scouting specialist on his hands.

Chuckling, Jazz laid in the sunshine, just watching his little drone-companion. He wondered if the hack had happened before or after launch. Knowing human corporations, if they’d lost contact with the facility after it’d been hacked, they’d probably just written it off. And if that was true…

“Finders keepers, right friend?” Jazz laughed to himself. Not that he had any intention of doing anything about the erstaz mining facility and its adorable little murder machines. 

Except take another nap.

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	6. Black Ops (+ A Halloween Pumpkin Coming Alive)

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“So what’s Starscream up to now…” Jazz murmured quietly to himself as he opened up the jet’s terminal and pulled up the activity logs. He could infer some things just from looking around the lab. Like… the usually Cybertronian-centric Starscream was on a human-equipment kick right now. And it had something to do with plants. Which… that made the human equipment make some sort of sense. It’s not like you could make grow lights, greenhouses and clay pots out of purely Cybertronian tech.

What Jazz didn’t, couldn’t, understand was how Starscream had mixed the two, or why there were wires winding around the giant pumpkin in the corner. 

“Thought Shockwave was supposed to be the hazard to the natural order of things.” 

Starscream’s terminal was full of internet searches: giant pumpkin contest, what pumpkin breed grows biggest, jack o lanterns. He was getting into the holiday spirit!

If Jazz weren’t so sure the mech was up to no good, he might have just left it. But while Starscream usually, eventually, turned his inventions into increasingly creative ways to off Megatron, he also tried to kill Autobots, humans, and everything nearby with them too. Can’t have that.

Still, he was curious. He hadn’t found any research notes or anything in his search through Starscream’s computer, so he wasn’t quite sure what all this was supposed to do. Hopefully there was something irreplaceable in here, since Jazz wasn’t going to be able to destroy the research notes if Starscream had them on him instead of in the computer. You’d think, Jazz chuckled to himself as he uploaded the virus that would erase whatever was there, that Starscream had a reason to be paranoid or something. 

Naw. 

In lieu of a copy of the notes, Jazz started taking pictures for the science geeks to puzzle over while he planted the incendiary charges. Fire, but less boom. Despite everything, he didn’t really want to blow a hole in the side of the sunken  _ Nemesis. _

Usually that would be that. He wouldn’t check in with Wheeljack and Co to see what Starscream had been building unless he needed to go destroy more of it, but this time… Really, “What  _ are _ you trying to do with these pumpkins?” Jazz mused. He ran his hand over the biggest, as large as a small mech. 

It moved.

Jazz scrambled backwards with a squeak of alarm. Plants weren’t supposed to do that!

Plants  _ really _ weren’t supposed to lunge forward on their vines and wires, and bite down with gleaming metal teeth, trying to swallow him in their cavernous mouths! 

Jazz threw a few more incendiary charges at the thing. They were snatched out of the air and swallowed. Hopefully that thing’ll splat when he set them off, but the smaller pumpkins were converging on him. Ack!

Okay. Jazz was  _ so _ out of here!

Dodging and dancing around the suddenly hungry jungle of toothy gourds and grasping vines, Jazz escaped to the hall, slamming the door to the lab closed behind him. He was lucky no one was around to see him, but he’d take the brig and trading quips and anti-hacking software with Soundwave over  _ that _ any day!

The door shuddered as the pumpkins slammed against the door, trying to reach him. 

“Really Starscream!” he broke cover to yell at the nearest camera, not that it could hear him since he’d spoofed the sound pick up and set the footage to loop before sneaking into the lab.. “This is a thing now?”

_ Slam! _

Yeah… it was a thing. Starscream really needed to see a shrink or ten, if  _ this _ was the first thing he’d thought of when he saw a Jack-o-lantern. Usually he’d wait until he was out in the water to set off the charges, but --

**_Fooosh!_ **

Pumpkins screamed (don’t ask  _ him _ how), fire alarms went off… Jazz dashed down the corridor. Time to escape in the chaos and hope to Primus he’d used enough fire!

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	7. Bayverse: Jazz/Ratchet - Ghost of You (+ A Repetitive Scary Noise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my creator’s choice prompt, I chose a prompt from TF Rare Pairing’s list of Jazz Week friendly prompts. Bayverse: Jazz/Ratchet - ghost of you. It worked very well with my prompt from my Halloween list. Happy Halloween! 
> 
> Warnings: It’s Bayverse and about ghosts, so character death.

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Jazz woke up on the street with Ratchet leaning over him. He wasn’t exactly surprised since the last thing he remembered was taking on Megatron, but he could hear the battle still raging around him, Decepticons and Autobots and human military and civilians all meshing into to the sounds of fighting, setting off targeting reactions. What surprised him was the lack of pain. Ratchet usually saved the good drugs for once the battle was over. 

“Took a good hit didn’t I, doc?” he said, or tried to. Jazz heard the words, but Ratchet didn’t react to them, working frantically on his frame. 

Really good drugs. Must be serious. 

Not willing to get in Ratchet’s way or distract him while he was obviously trying to save his life, Jazz went ahead and relaxed and stared upward at the clouds and the smoke. Every so often a spat of too-close gunfire, or a scream, or explosion, would make Jazz twitch and Ratchet crouch defensively over his patient but they had both been through this routine before.

With a visible sigh, eventually Ratchet said something. Jazz couldn’t hear him because his audios were still ringing from that last explosion, but it looked like he was saying Jazz was too injured for… something. He placed his hand over Jazz’s optics and then stood up.

“Hey wait!” Jazz staggered to his feet after the medic. Surprised he actually had managed to get up -- the good drugs usually kept him paralysed for the duration -- Jazz looked down at himself to assess his own injuries. Everything looked fine! “Ratchet!”

Ratchet paused, but the sound of Prime’s cannon sent them both running toward the source.

They got there in time to witness the aftermath. Ratchet did a quick check over Prime to make sure he could stand, then left. While Prime stood there speechifying, Ratchet returned carrying a corpse. “I couldn’t save him.”

Curious and saddened, Jazz came over to see who had fallen. He stared at the silver frame as Prime let out a saddened, “Jazz…”

But, “I’m right here!” Ratchet stiffened and looked around, but no one else reacted at all. “Optimus! Guys! I’m not dead!” 

No one looked at him.

They started to leave, and Jazz lunged after them, reaching out to grab his Prime, his friend. “Prime!” 

His hands went right through him.

“Frag!” he yelped. 

Ratchet was still looking around, tilting his head like he’d heard something and Jazz’s spark surged with hope. “You can hear me?”

Ratchet didn’t respond, just continued searching before shrugging and following the others away.

“No! Come back!”

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End file.
